Dion Hinchcliffe

Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Title: About Dion Hinchcliffe Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized business strategist, bestselling author, enterprise architect, industry analyst, and noted keynote speaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in digital strategy, the future of work, and enterprise IT. He works with the leadership teams of large enterprises as well as software vendors to raise the bar for the art-of-the-possible in their digital capabilities. He is currently Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. Dion is also currently an executive fellow at the Tuck School of Business Center for Digital Strategies. He is a globally recognized industry expert on the topics of digital transformation, digital workplace, enterprise collaboration, API…...

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As a general rule of thumb, management theory has steadily fallen behind what new technologies are making possible. Digital performance management, talent analytics, work coordination and other powerful new Future of Work capabilities are now commonplace because of new breakthroughs in technologies and design.

But these developments are often poorly accounted for in how we strategically manage our businesses. Now a growing body of evidence has demonstrated that a potent enterprise-wide management approach that was originally pioneered by leading technology companies beginning a few decades ago has demonstrated real value in improving how we operate and transform our organizations. What's more, this approach can be combined with the aforementioned Future of Work technologies to consistently achieve better business outcomes.

Known as Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs, the approach was first used widely by senior managers at Intel, where it then spread to Google and was subsequently adopted by LinkedIn, Twitter, Dropbox, Spotify, AirBnB and Uber. It's hard not to notice that these companies are leaders in their industries, and it's widely believed that OKRs helped them get there.

The idea behind OKRs themselves is simple, and that's also why they work so well: OKRs help organizations better understand and achieve their objectives through clearly defining and then measuring concrete, specific outcomes.

It's the simplicy and therefore the acccessibiily of OKRs that makes them interesting right away. But it's the results they bring about that keeps them in place. In my experience, when I run across a top technology team in the industry, I can tell soon after we meet whether they are using OKRs. The team is directed, focused, and each member clearly knows what they are about. This relentless focus on bringing about a desired result in the operations of a company has since led to OKRs spread out well beyond its tech roots and into the broader functioning of organizations today. 

I've mentioned OKRs in the context of operations several times now. Although the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has often been the entry point for OKRs in a typical organization in years past, it is increasingly the Chief Operating Officer (COO) , the role most chiefly responsible for the day-to-day operations of an organization, that is bringing them to bear operationally. Intriguingly, when I come across a COO using OKRs, they are often grappling with major changes that they have struggled to progressively activate in the day-to-day functioning of the organization.

With OKRs tied so intimately with the results that are sought by an organization -- including its teams and individual contributors -- the COO can use the future-looking view that the approach is defined by to drive large-scale changes, needed enterprise-wide shifts, and even overarching digital and business transformation.

The secret of course is being able to effectively adopt and wield OKRs across the organization. Given the growing interesting that COOs have in tapping into the results that OKRs have demonstrated in the field, I've recently published a new research report that explores how COOs can get the most effective results from the approach. In particular, it is in balancing the maturity of OKRs with the scale, which can be greatly assisted by an enabling platform that's been shaped for the purpose (see figure above.)

This new research is one of the very first that explores how to activate and succeed with OKRs in operations. Highlights include:

• Developing a rollout and operations plan for OKRs
• The key review dimensions for OKRs
• How to use to OKRs as a top-level operating model
• Using automation to assist the OKR process
• Building an effective operational capability around OKRs

If you're seeking the how, what, and whys of COOs and OKRs, please read my new report — OKRs: COOs Can Drive Sustainable Change with This Breakthrough Approach â€” which provides a thorough examination of OKR methodology through the lens of the COO role. You can download a complimentary copy of the report for a limited time, courtesy of GTMHub.

For another exploration of OKRs and the COO in more detail please join an all-star cast on the topic of OKRs for The Horizontal Thinkers Roundtable: Chief Operating Officer Edition. It's a valuable chance to participate in OKR-centric conversations with other COOs. Please register for the event to get the latest perspectives.

My Current Future of Work Research and Analysis

Building a new, better, and more collaborative future of work post-pandemic | Citrix

The Crisis-Accelerated Digital Revolution of Work

Reimagining the Post-2020 Employee Experience

It's Time to Think About the Post-2020 Employee Experience

How Work Will Evolve in a Digital Post-Pandemic Society

Revisiting How to Cultivate Connected Organizations in an Age of Coronavirus

Working in a coronavirus world: Strategies and tools for staying productive | ZDNet

A Checklist for a Modern Core Digital Workplace and/or Intranet

Creating the Modern Digital Workplace and Employee Experience

The Challenging State of Employee Experience and Digital Workplace Today

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Doug Henschen

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

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Planful Predict portfolio starts with signal detection and forecasts aimed at improving financial and operational planning, but there’s more to come.

Financial and operational planning is all about preparing for future outcomes. The better you can see into the future, the better prepared you will be to proactively respond to whatever comes your way.

Accurate foresight is the promise of Predict: Signals, a new product released June 9 by Planful, the cloud-based financial planning, analysis and consolidation vendor. Predict: Signals has been in private preview with ten Planful customers over the last six months, and June 9 marked general availability to all customers. The promise of this optional new feature is to augment human capabilities by using machine learning (ML) to:

• Surface anomalies, including those that are the root causes of variances from plans
• Identify notable patterns, particularly those that point to risks
• Augment human planning and decision-making efforts with ML-supported analysis of forecasts.

Prediction has been squarely in the domain of data scientists for decades, but in recent years we’ve seen automation and augmentation features designed to democratize these capabilities. AutoML features, for example, are making predictive techniques accessible to data warehouse professionals, while augmented analytics features are doing the same for business intelligence users.

Augmented predictive features are a much more recent phenomenon within the planning space, and they promise to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) professionals. Predict: Signals, for example, trains predictive models using customer’s historical data. When trained on at least 36 months of data, Planful says Predict: Signals can apply forward-looking anayses to financial projections and deliver insights with 95%-plus confidence levels.

What happens when part of that history includes an abnormal year, I naturally wondered given the pandemic experience? Planful says the feature’s built-in algorithm can identify sections of data, like those seen during last year’s business swings, that have the potential to skew the model and can normalize that data.

Predict: Signals does its training behind the scenes, without any need for data science expertise on the part of Planful customers. Pricing of this add-on feature is based on the volume of data used for training (as measured in gigabytes), and there a multiple subscription and custom pricing options. Once the model is trained, it will validate any forward looking forecast, checking for abnormalities. Confident forecasts are a great starting point for more realistic, on-target what-if scenario planning, and there’s no limit to the number of scenarios you can analyze.

Predict: Signals highlights forecast values that are at low-, medium- or high-risk of not being realized, supporting variance analysis, replanning and proactive action.

As actual performance data rolls in, Predict: Signals supports variance analysis, spotting risks and the underlying causes of exceptions. It also delivers new sets of predicted values, including upper, lower and median values – good goal posts for base-case, best-case and worst-case planning. The feature won’t make any decisions for the planner – it’s meant to augment and not replace the human -- but it does save them time by surfacing the real problems and risks they should address and the positive surprises they should try to maximize.

Planful has more capabilities on the Predict roadmap, so Planful customers can expect a continuing rollout of new augmented capabilities over the next few years. We’ve seen a similar pattern of machine-assisted features gaining traction in the BI and analytics space in recent years, and it has helped those platforms reach a wider community of users. I’m eager to see whether computer-augmentation will help accelerate the move of planning into sales, human resources and other operational areas.   

Data to Decisions Tech Optimization Revenue & Growth Effectiveness New C-Suite Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity business finance ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Robotics AI Analytics Automation Quantum Computing Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain Leadership VR Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS CRM ERP Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief People Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Insider Associates SoftwareInsider AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Analytics Automation B2B B2C CX EX Employee Experience HR HCM business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology eCommerce Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service Healthcare Chief Analytics Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Product Officer Chief Experience Officer

Liz Miller

Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

About Liz Miller: Liz Miller is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation, focused on the org-wide team sport known as customer experience. While covering CX as an enterprise strategy, Miller spends time zeroing in on the functional demands of Marketing and Service and the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer, the rise of the Chief Experience Officer, the evolution of customer engagement, and the rising requirement for a new security posture that accounts for the threat to brand trust in this age of AI. With over 30 years of marketing experience, Miller offers strategic guidance on the leadership, business transformation, and technology requirements to deliver on today’s CX strategies. She has worked with global marketing organizations to transform…...

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Marketing—or more specifically the act of designing, developing, and deploying engagements to foster (profitable) relationships—is hard work.

The role of marketing is clearly defined in titles, job descriptions, and organizational charts. The act of marketing, however, can spread across any number of departments and functions and, in reality, can be executed by anyone.

Fundamentally, it is the act of marketing that directly affects the cross-functional team sport known as customer experience. In fact, Constellation Senior Vice President and Principal Analyst Nicole France often calls customer experience a mindset—a unifying strategy for the entire organization based on and in the service of the customer. It is not a toolset or a platform. This is why the act of marketing is so critical: It can deliver moments that influence customers, respond to them, and—when done well—inspire them to traverse the path between their investigations and their transactions.

Modern marketing isn’t just about engaging with the connected customer. It is also about meeting the rising tide of an experience-starved economy. The old mindset of command-and-control marketing, where marketers build journeys for obedient customers to follow, is being set aside. The new foundation for engagement is less about the rigidity of a funnel and more about being ready to reach and meet customers where they expect brands to appear and interact.

Overall, Adobe Summit 2021 reinforced Adobe’s understanding of this increasingly complex world of marketing—and clearly telegraphed that Adobe, just like marketing, intends to bring the CIO and the IT teams driving digital transformation along for the ride. Adobe Summit reclaimed a bit of the optimism that had been understandably lost in the chaos of 2020. Arguably, the spirit of fun and unbridled joy still seems centered on Adobe Creative Cloud. Only time will tell if Adobe Summit, and Adobe Experience Cloud, can celebrate the business of marketing as openly as Adobe Creative Cloud celebrates creators.

Here is a quick peek at the Adobe Summit 2021 announcements that turned my head:

Adobe Journey Optimizer: Built on Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Journey Optimizer benefits from a unified and normalized data model, allowing for dynamic and event-based response to a customer’s signal. With some nice artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services and capabilities on top, Adobe Journey Optimizer takes the old vision of “set it and forget it” campaign drips and pivots into that journey-of-you mindset that experience-hungry marketers have been discussing for years.

Why it matters: Despite our best intentions, establishing journeys for an audience of one can be painful, landing more squarely in the realm of sending email blasts to an audience-of-one segment. Building out and perfecting a journey can be time-consuming, and to be frank, that is time many marketing teams don’t have. Yet it is exactly the holistic engagement experience that customers crave. When you extend the expectation for relevant and contextual journeys to reach beyond the walls of marketing, execution—let alone optimization—can feel impossible. The importance of tools such as Adobe Journey Optimizer is the capacity to expand the view of where and how behaviors and events can influence the customer’s journey, especially when those events reshape or redirect a customer’s path. We can’t afford to assume that our only triggers for engagement come from marketing-driven channels. Adobe Journey Optimizer sets out to do just what it claims to do—optimize the journey that the customer is firmly in control of.

Adobe Customer Journey Analytics: If Adobe Journey Optimizer puts touches in the context of the customer, Adobe Customer Journey Analytics puts omnichannel journey data in the context of the business. With flexible dashboards that are relevant across multiple teams and stakeholders, everyone contributes and stays informed of the insights and key performance indicators (KPIs) that are most relevant to and for them. Simplified data collection, governance and privacy controls, and dashboards that can address both the customer’s and the business’s needs in real time are just the start of the analytics journey.

Why it matters: Analytics, and more specifically marketing analytics, is turning a corner. No longer the realm of tactical measurement and tracking of operational performance, marketing analytics is maturing to define specific KPIs informed by the business, by the strategic goals of marketing itself, and finally by the tactics and points of operational execution. In the old view of marketing metrics—a world in which tactical measures sufficed—old tools for balancing and predicting media mix and accounting for marketing resources gave some peace of mind to finance officers tired of that sinking feeling that marketing investments were akin to burning money. However, through the lens of a true growth-driving chief marketer, those analytics were just operational goalposts purpose-built for tactical optimization. What is needed is tools that quantify engagements—regardless of origin—that, when connected and analyzed as a whole, can truly quantify the value and impact of experience. Tools such as Adobe Customer Journey Analytics take that leap, with the firepower of an end-to-end platform that can turn the insights of journey analytics into actions.

Adobe Real-Time CDP for B2B: It should not come as a big surprise that CMOs have put the customer data platform (CDP) at the top of their tech wish list in 2021. What is surprising is how few CDPs have taken on the critical data issues that haunt many B2B organizations. Built on Adobe Experience Platform, the Adobe Real-Time CDP B2B edition extends the unified and normalized understanding of the customer, with a distinct focus on unifying data around people and accounts. The important piece of the puzzle here is the flexible Adobe Experience Data Model, which has been updated to natively support B2B data and allows for account hierarchies, unique B2B data objects, B2B enhanced profiles, and support for data from connected applications. B2B data can be ingested in a more secure framework, thanks to some pretty-well-thought-out data governance and identity capabilities that label sources and assign and enforce policies.

Why it matters: In the many flavors and sizes of CDPs on the market, most favor the scale and sheer velocity of data cascading across systems focused on executing B2C engagements. Few understand, let alone work to demystify, the specific issues that face B2B organizations looking to personalize engagements across an increasingly complex web of influencers, buyers, and users. This offering is likely to get heads turning among large enterprises that don’t fit into the perfectly defined lines of B2B or B2C. For the hybrid organization—and for those organizations with both B2B and B2C lines of business—this becomes an attractive single CDP for all scenarios, with the Adobe offering supporting both use cases with a single, unified profile.

Adobe Experience Manager Assets Essentials: I hesitate to call this a “lite” version of Adobe Experience Manager Assets. It is aptly dubbed “Essentials,” delivering the rightsized toolkit for the individual user just trying to make experiences happen. It comes packed with plenty of power under the hood—the difference being that Adobe Experience Manager Assets Essentials brings the right power, not watered-down power. Adobe Experience Manager Assets Essentials will be the default asset management solution across several Adobe Experience Cloud applications, starting with Adobe Journey Optimizer (June 2021) and Adobe Workfront later in 2021. The solution delivers a workspace that is easy to set up, easy to use, and built with collaboration in mind. It just makes the act of finding common, consistent images; videos; and a growing library of rich media assets easier. Organizations have focused on the democratization of data; Essentials looks to give that same open, flexible, and collaborative spirit to asset collaboration, access, and utilization. As the newly acquired Workfront solution becomes more deeply integrated and aligned across the Adobe portfolio, I expect to see Adobe Experience Manager Assets become an even more intentional bridge across the Adobe Creative and Adobe Experience Cloud applications, but for now, Adobe Experience Manager Assets Essentials is a lot to chew on, especially for organizations that have not taken the critical pivot to a digital asset management (DAM) strategy and solution to power that last mile of experience delivery.

Why it matters: Let’s say it for the record: For some organizations, asset management is achieved by email or mass storage “boxes” where an asset is more likely to go to die than achieve its intended outcome. The beauty of Adobe Experience Manager Assets Essentials isn’t just in the toolset or functionality. There is also a stunningly smart business need for a smaller, more readily available and potentially more budget-friendly resource that can be implemented in nonmarketing functions such as sales, service, and support. Essentials rightsizes for the real work of delivering consistency of experience in lockstep with relevance and context. In the spirit of full transparency: This was the announcement I was most excited about in a sea of interesting launches. It is woefully easy to discount the importance of a DAM solution and even easier to assume there is no such thing as a DAM strategy. You’d be DAM wrong.

The individual product announcements at Adobe Summit were in and of themselves important and impressive. But the biggest unveiling that should not be ignored is the reveal of Adobe’s new “marketecture” that shifts away from Adobe Experience Cloud’s serving as an umbrella for a loosely connected portfolio of acquisitions and legacy services. What was unveiled at Adobe Summit was a new view of Adobe Experience Cloud as a foundational system for engagement, built on data while having been created for organization-wide execution and engagement and bolstered with significant services such as AI/ML, identity, and governance, to name a few. Instead of being an acquisition showcase, Adobe’s view of the world starts with a unified data model in which an increasingly powerful portfolio of applications can coexist and, dare I say, connect far beyond the walls of the department known as marketing.

Adobe sits poised to serve as the unapologetic champion of the work of marketing. This new structure and vision for Adobe Experience Cloud is a starting point, which is interesting for a brand that has been synonymous with marketing since the 1980s. Then again, this might be the exactly right posture for Adobe as it races toward its 40th anniversary in 2022—reimagined to power the engagements of tomorrow without sacrificing its enduring legacy of creativity.

Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Data Officer

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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New C-Suite Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Future of Work Insider Associates SoftwareInsider AR AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Analytics Automation B2B B2C CX EX Employee Experience HR HCM business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology eCommerce Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Experience Officer

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work Matrix Commerce Next-Generation Customer Experience Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization New C-Suite Insider Associates SoftwareInsider amazon AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Analytics Automation B2B B2C CX EX Employee Experience HR HCM business Marketing Metaverse developer SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Quantum Computing Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology eCommerce Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Social Healthcare VR CCaaS UCaaS Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service AR Chief Analytics Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Experience Officer

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth tesla Insider Associates apple Google IBM SoftwareInsider amazon SAP Oracle Microsoft Leadership Chief Analytics Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Experience Officer

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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New C-Suite Matrix Commerce Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Future of Work Tech Optimization Insider Associates Leadership AR AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Analytics Automation B2B B2C CX EX Employee Experience HR HCM business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology eCommerce Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service Chief Analytics Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Procurement Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Experience Officer

Liz Miller

Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

About Liz Miller: Liz Miller is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation, focused on the org-wide team sport known as customer experience. While covering CX as an enterprise strategy, Miller spends time zeroing in on the functional demands of Marketing and Service and the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer, the rise of the Chief Experience Officer, the evolution of customer engagement, and the rising requirement for a new security posture that accounts for the threat to brand trust in this age of AI. With over 30 years of marketing experience, Miller offers strategic guidance on the leadership, business transformation, and technology requirements to deliver on today’s CX strategies. She has worked with global marketing organizations to transform…...

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When Carl von Clausewitz penned On War in 1873, I seriously doubt he had marketing in mind, but in his articulation of the “fog of war” he proves that he gets us.

War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgement is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.

Now…go back and replace “War” with “Marketing.” I’ll wait here.

Our reality, as a culture, is that we have based our actions and language around war. We execute campaigns. We target. We blast. We relish when small actions go viral: like handing out smallpox infected blankets, we enjoy when something we knowingly unleash infects an unwitting population. We draw battle lines and segment our enemy, carefully noting their behaviors to exploit weaknesses. We hide code in the pixels and stalk our prey.

In military war games, the application of intelligence and enemy tracking, especially through friendly force tracking systems, is key to developing a winning strategy by understanding the behaviors and context of a target to determine the optimal time, attack vector and defense posture needed to win both the battle and the war. Go ahead and let me know when this stops feeling like a MarTech pitch.

In marketing’s culture of war, who is the enemy combatant? The customer is our enemy.

Now. Imagine that in this decades long game of war, someone comes along and says, sorry but we intend to cut off a key stream of skilled intelligence. In fact, we are going to demand that you must proclaim openly and clearly to your enemy what ammunition you have collected, how you will be using your ammunition and give clear opportunity for your enemy to walk off the battlefield with zero penalty or threat of attack. Not only that, but we are also going to cut off your supply of ammunition you obtain through other parties.

The death of the 3rd party cookie and the introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) has sent some marketers (and more than a few ad and social platforms) into a tailspin. The demise of the cookie, in particular, has been slowly ratcheting up the stress levels as brands and agencies come to terms with just how often 3rd party cookie data is leveraged for everything from “personalization” (yeah, I put it in quotes…) to campaign optimization.

But let’s take a breath and just look at consumer behaviors in the wake of the ATT launch in iOS 14.5. According to a study from Flurry Analytics, a whopping 96% of users in the US are opting OUT of ad tracking. Their tracking notes that from a sample of 2.5 million daily active users, about 4% are allowing apps access to the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). On the other side of the data-shock canal is a study from the team at AppsFlyer in which over 13.2 million instances of a prompt being shown to an end-user. In this study, 39% of those prompts resulted in the user tapping the ALLOW button. The highest rate of “allow” opt-in were across apps like photography (64%), Shopping (44%), finance (42%), food & drink (42%) and non-gaming apps (42%).

Two dramatically different data points from dramatically different points of view. What IS clear, regardless of data source: apps and brands that hold a pre-existing level of affinity with their user are enjoying the benefit of the relationship. Casual gamers, who are typically transient and bounce from farm to farm or puzzle to puzzle, are not typically brand-loyal…and their opt-outs are demonstrating that. For these developers, we are seeing an increase in requests for account sign-ups or pre-ATT prompt content that provides more space to share messages that are in context to the app and displayed at a time that feels less dire and intrusive than the ATT prompt.

Those developers who have taken the time to articulate the VALUE of this requested exchange are also avoiding falling off the cliff. It could be argued they are, for the first time, having an open and honest value exchange discussion with their new partner, the customer.

Customers are tired of being treated like the enemy, being forced to dodge and weave their way through brand’s interpretation of “personalization” that can often be more impersonal and aggravating than mutually valued and valuable. This new age of the customer is asking marketing as an industry and a strategy to rethink our posture of war. In the absence of certain weapons, is there another way to build points of connection between the goals of our businesses and the goals of our customers.

Marketing’s job is shifting from being the General perched on top of the fill looking to pierce the fog of war to craft winning strategy and more like a seasoned host or hostess that can understand that exact moment our guests could really use another glass of wine…and be ready with the perfect sip to keep the relationship and revelry going. It is about knowing who is and isn’t lactose intolerant…and accepting those last-minute curveballs of Kelly being vegan. Afterall, you don’t blast Kelly with information about burgers when she is telling everyone about Veganuary…yet that’s exactly what you do if Kelly is the enemy and you need to control her and force her to eat chicken.

It is easy (and understandable) to have big and bold reactions to the new path of privacy and customer-valued and defined identity. These shifts can feel like the rug is being pulled out from under our strategies. But they are also an opportunity to lean into the behaviors, intentions and higher-fidelity signals our customers are leaving across our own 1st party sources. This is why we’ve seen so many technology solutions from B2B like Demandbase to B2C like Criteo leaning into better ways to deliver efficient and effective engagements through 1st party data stores.

Regardless of where the cookie crumbles, the first thing we need to accept and change is our culture. We need to admit we have been fighting a war. We need to wave the white flag so we can see just how many of our customers are relieved and ready to welcome us to a new party.

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R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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Big Idea: It took 50 years for markets to consolidate down to a few dominant players. Now it takes ten. rwang0 Wed, 05/05/2021 - 12:55

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